Junior high school students’ views of nature of science: evidence from a private school in Davao Region, Philippines

ABSTRACT

Understanding nature of science (NOS) is integral to the development of students’ scientific literacy. While NOS studies are growing worldwide, none of these reported on the views of secondary school learners in the Philippines. Hence, this study examined the Filipino junior high school (JHS) students’ views of the NOS and determined whether significant differences existed when these views were analysed according to gender and grade level. Through convenience sampling, a total of 173 JHS students from a private school in Davao Region, Philippines, participated in this study. Employing a convergent parallel mixed method design, data were collected using the Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry questionnaire. Analyses of quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the sampled JHS students did not have well-informed views of various NOS aspects. Mainly, students held transitional views of most NOS tenets. Further analysis showed that a significant gender-based difference only existed in the imaginative and creative aspect while, significant grade level-based differences were only noted among Likert responses of students in the tentative and observation and inferences aspects of NOS.

KEYWORDS:

• Nature of science
• junior high school
• Philippines

Acknowledgements

We thank Katherine P. Caga-anan for her assistance in the qualitative data analysis, and Karyn Chrislene A. Vitor for her comments on the earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

This study was approved by the Research and Publication Center of UM Tagum College.